Framingham: Apartments for Mount Wayte Avenue?

FRAMINGHAM — Across the empty parking lot at Mount Wayte Plaza, weeds have marbled through the asphalt like cracks in a sunbaked desert.

Once a busy retail center, with a supermarket, barber and shops, the site is vacant today, surrounded by a metal fence that guards the empty strip mall and crumbling pavement on the other side.

"It's a mess,” said Ed Kross, who lives nearby on Union Avenue. “The building has to come down. There's nothing you can do."

Neighbors have long lamented the condition of the Southside plaza, which straddles the corner of Franklin Street and Mount Wayte Avenue.

After years of frustration, those hoping for rebirth at the site got a glimmer of hope this summer when a proposal emerged from Weston-based Baystone Development to erect housing.

Baystone announced a few months ago that it had reached an agreement with the plaza’s longtime owner to purchase the property and develop luxury townhomes and apartment buildings, coupled with a restaurant.

The company was scheduled to meet Tuesday with the Zoning Board of Appeals to present a modified design with 210 apartments — a reduction from the 233 it had initially proposed.

While some residents are encouraged, the plan hasn’t been uniformly well-received.

Among those uneasy with the concept is Vaios Theodorakos, the man who owns a large chunk of the property in downtown Framingham.

Theodorakos, who is developing new housing downtown, says allowing more than 200 apartments to be built at Mount Wayte Plaza would draw renters away from downtown, killing the momentum the town has built to reinvigorate the area.

Neighbors have also given Baystone's plan mixed reviews, saying they want shops and stores at the plaza, not apartments.

Kross is encouraged by plans for a sit-down restaurant — an amenity the neighborhood lacks — but he wants to see more stores and fewer apartment buildings.

"I am convinced something could work,” he said, “if somebody were to give it a try and market it properly.”

Slice of southwest Framingham

Mount Wayte Plaza sits at the corner of Framingham’s new District 6, and the question of how to turn around the blighted shopping center has emerged as one of the most significant issues on the minds of local voters.

District 6 is comprised of Framingham’s existing Precinct 10 and Precinct 11. It holds two of the town’s spacious recreational areas, Farm Pond and Cushing Park, and runs west to the Ashland border, where neighborhoods have a more suburban feel.

To the east, the district runs into Framingham’s downtown, bordering the train tracks along Waverly Street to the south and the rear of Mount Wayte Plaza to the north.

Kross, an electrical engineer who lives on Union Avenue, has watched the plaza slide in decline over the past few decades.

"It's embarrassing,” Kross said. “To make it look like, well, nothing is going on here, it gives me the feeling that, as you drive by, nothing's working. That's the feeling you get, which is too bad because it really can. I think there's stuff that can go here."

The plaza was approved several years ago for a $6 million redevelopment, but when the project failed to materialize, longtime owner Sam Adams listed it for sale. Members of the Planning Board then refused in August 2016 to extend their approval for the redevelopment, saying Adams neglected the property and burned bridges with the town.

Representatives from Baystone Development argue the failure to attract partners for the redevelopment project shows the local market for retail development is soft.

Mike Gatlin, chairman of the Framingham Economic Development and Industrial Corporation, agrees retail — particularly a supermarket — appears to be a long shot for the plaza. The site isn’t large enough to house the type of large, all-in-one grocery store that has dominated the market in recent years, Gatlin said.

And a new grocery store at Mount Wayte would face a plethora of competitors, including multiple Stop & Shops, Roche Brothers in Natick and Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods on Rte. 9.

“I think the reality is that if you take a look at the number of grocery stores in the area,” Gatlin said, “there are a lot of them."

Too many apartments?

Baystone’s new plan includes a mix of three-bedroom townhomes and apartment buildings. The developers say the site would bring about 500 residents to the area, including an estimated 11 school-age children, based on the occupancy trends at other developments in town.

The question of how many children will be drawn to the community by residential development has loomed large as town boards contemplate a slew of major apartment and condominium building projects in the works.

Data suggests the demand for more rental housing in Framingham is strong. Only about 2.2 percent of existing apartments in the community are vacant, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, which recorded the vacancy rate at 6.2 percent during the period from 2006-2010.

After years of planning to create more apartments in the central business district, Framingham last year successfully lured two major residential projects to areas near its commuter rail station.

At 266 Waverly St., developer Mill Creek Residential plans to build a six-story, $73 million apartment complex with 270 units on the site of an old Harley-Davidson dealership.

At 55-75 Concord St., developer Wood Partners is preparing to embark on a $60 million project that would create 197 apartments on several parcels that are now home to parking lots, warehouses, a church and vacant stores. It includes a six-story parking garage with 315 spaces.

Adding even more development pressure is the pending sale of the Bancroft Building, located at 59 Fountain St. in the southern corner of District 6. Long a home for artists, the building is in need of repairs, and tenants were notified this summer they will need to vacate by early next year to prepare for the old manufacturing site to be rehabbed into condominiums.

Drawing from downtown

Units in the Baystone project would be priced between about $1,600 and $3,900 a month, and would range in size from studio apartments measuring around 600 square feet to three-bedroom rentals with 1,650 square feet.

Buildings would offer about 8,000 square feet of amenities, including a swimming pool, terraces, barbecue areas, a fitness center, fireplaces, a theater room and lounge.

Vaios Theodorakos, who owns a large share of the properties downtown, worries the new luxury apartments at Mount Wayte Avenue will prove more appealing to tenants than similar units downtown.

Theodorakos, who has owned apartments across town for 30 years, is among those competing in the residential market. He recently built new modular apartment buildings on Frederick Street, and began work about eight months ago building 24 new apartments above in the old Amsden Building.

Theodorakos worries allowing apartments at Mount Wayte Plaza will cause a “vacuum” downtown, torpedoing the efforts made over the last five years to rezone the central business district for multifamily residential housing and bring residents to the area near the train station.

"We need direct housing in downtown," Theodorakos said. "Walkable housing, where you can walk out your door, get a cup of coffee, grab a mattress, go buy a shirt, go buy some sneakers, go grab a cocktail at night ... . We don't need it a mile down the road. That would be catastrophic to everything that the last five years that the town said was the vision for the town. It's catastrophic."

Jim Haddadin can be reached at 617-863-7144 or jhaddadin@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter: @JimHaddadin

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